Water group gleans Sioux Falls strategies

By: 
Jamie Hult, Staff writer
Flushing the toilet uses more water than any other household fixture or appliance. 
Seventy percent of water put on lawns in the heat of the day evaporates.
Sioux Falls gained 20,000 residents without increasing its water usage. 
All of these facts and more came out of Brandon’s water development committee meeting last week.  
The group’s second gathering on Nov. 28 began with a presentation by Sioux Falls water division employees, environmental engineer Tim Stefanich and water program coordinator Darin Freese.
Committee members left the two-hour meeting charged with ideas for educating the public on conservation, enforcing restrictions, offering rebates on items that conserve water and taking advantage of the current public momentum and concern about Brandon’s water issues. 
“This water discussion has become a pretty big topic in the town here. I think we need to take advantage of the stir that’s going on right now and run with it,” said city alderman Don Wells, who heads the 17-person task force.
Wells suggested the committee make an educational video on water conservation, starring themselves and edited by local high school students, to put on social media and the city website. Several liked the idea, as well as another action item – recapping meetings in blog posts on the city’s website and the Facebook page Brandon Ask & Tell, which has gained about 1,000 followers since Brandon’s water issues began boiling over this summer. 
Sioux Falls began looking at water conservation in 2002 after a population boom in the 1990s showed the city would run out of water if usage didn’t decline. Year-round, odd/even restrictions came in 2007. 
Results weren’t immediate, but over time the city charted a significant drop in water use. 
“We’ve actually added the population of Watertown to the city of Sioux Falls, and our water demands have not gone up,” Stefanich said.
Water conservation isn’t about short-term lawn watering bans, he said; it’s about emphasizing lasting, day-to-day reduction in water usage by customers.
“We never know the worth of water until the well is dry,” he said.
Stefanich and Freese talked about how Sioux Falls conserves water, what works in a conservation program and what doesn’t. They shared several suggestions: 
• Offer rebates to water customers who purchase low-flow toilets, rain sensors and programmable timers for their lawns. 
• Implement tiered water rates in which higher users pay more. “We found this was a pretty good deterrent. For a lot of people that extra cost really wasn’t worth it,” Stefanich said. Brandon had tiered rates several years ago, said city administrator and committee member Bryan Read, but did away with it after backlash from businesses and residents. 
• Enforce year-round, odd/even watering restrictions by honing in on households in violation, requiring rain sensors for all irrigation systems installed after 2005 and hiring a summer intern to drop signs and door-hangers at the homes of offenders. Sioux Falls even has a water complaints hotline that rings directly in to Freese. “It’s amazing how many neighbors turn in their neighbors. It’s a very good deterrent,” he said. 
• Give your lawn one inch of water a week. 
• Look for leaks around the house and shore them up. “The biggest leaker is probably the toilet. Nobody really looks at it,” Stefanich said. 
• Give the wells a rest. If you conserve water, Stefanich said, “you’re not pumping the heck out of it 24/7 during the summertime. You can actually rest some of those wells, allow them to recharge, and then turn them back on again. A lot of times that will help improve your efficiency in those wells.” 
• Educate the public and give them a visual reference by which to gauge the city’s current water supply. Sioux Falls has tiered watering restrictions based on how high the Big Sioux River is, Stefanich said. The lower the water, the stricter the restrictions. 
• Partner with multi-family complexes to shore up leaks and install low-flow appliances. One complex in Sioux Falls saved $15,000 in water usage over a year by replacing all faucets and showers, Freese said. 
• Maintain your water softener. “It’s just like any other appliance,” Freese said. “It can be serviced.”
Stefanich and Freese also suggested resources like the American Water Works Association, whose study identified indoor household fixtures that use the most water. 
Toilet flushing is the largest indoor use of water in single-family homes (24 percent), followed by faucets (20 percent), showers (20 percent), clothes washers (16 percent) and leaks (13 percent). While Sioux Falls has seen success in reducing its water consumption, “It does take a lot of employee time to run a conservation program,” Freese admitted. 
During discussion of enforcing watering restrictions in Brandon, several committee members questioned if the city has the manpower for a conservation program. 
“If this is a priority for us, the money should be there,” Pat Hammond said. 
Brandon enforced this summer’s lawn watering ban with red signs in the yards of violators after the first offense and door-hangers after the second. Service was shut off for a third offense.
Both Stefanich and Freese suggested the committee and the city concentrate more on conserving the water Brandon already has rather than seeking new water sources – an option Brandon is exploring with Minnehaha Rural Water Corp.     
“The cheapest water you will find is the water you already have in your system. Try to find ways to conserve that water,” Stefanich said. 
He listed reasons to conserve: lower production and electrical costs, improved supply and reliability, lower wastewater flow and treatment costs, lower water and wastewater bills. 
Wells said the committee will hear from the director of the Department of Natural Resources at its Dec. 12 meeting and the state geologist and several hydrologists at its Dec. 19 meeting. 
Both meetings are set for 6 p.m. at city hall and recorded live for YouTube.  

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